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The sun is setting on Dominic Dromgoole’s dynamic 10-year reign at Shakespeare’s Globe. Just as Peter Hall did at the National, and Adrian Noble at the RSC too, he is bowing out with Shakespeare’s late plays, bringing the Bard for the first time into the candle-lit intimacy of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the closest we can get to encountering the works in a space that matches the indoor theatres of the Jacobean age.

Dromgoole is directing only the first and final offerings, beginning with Pericles and winding up with the perfect swansong, The Tempest (the other two, Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale, he has, with characteristic generosity, entrusted to rising younger directors).

He can at times, though, be generous to a fault – a thought that stole across my mind watching James Garnon contend with the lead role of the “Prince of Tyre”. It’s meaty, matinée-idol stuff: our proto-blockbuster hero zigzags around the Aegean and Mediterranean of antiquity, propelled by the vengefulness of the incestuous Antiochus, violent tempests and fate. He is separated from his wife (presumed dead) and daughter, the mileage racking up before this family of refugees is miraculously reunited.

Jessica Baglow as Marina and Ryan McKen as Leonine in PericlesCredit:
Alastair Muir

Mark Rylance’s recent complaint that actors are speaking Shakespeare too slowly, and reverently, applies here (and not just to Garnon). Admittedly the early acts are often attributed to his supposed collaborator George Wilkins; the language is a mouthful. But too little comes trippingly off our protagonist’s tongue.

When Garnon assumes a more meditative approach, we hear his thoughts; when he reverts to a more hoist-the-mainsails mode, it sounds hollow. This epic, sprawling play has its humour, but the audience merriment I heard in the closing scenes – as a bearded, bedraggled Pericles rasps wonder at his fortune – told its own story of poignancy undone.

Here’s assuming he will settle in, get the lie of the lines. Overall, Dromgoole’s production has zest, and elsewhere there’s much to treasure: as a gender-bended Gower, the narrator, the sprite-like Sheila Reid makes every word resonate with ethereal charm.

Fergal McElherron as Helicanus, James Garnon as Pericles, and Dennis Herdman as BoltCredit:
Alastair Muir

The candles are almost an additional player – spell-binding to behold, as Claire van Kampen’s live accompanying music is to listen to. More work, combined with that most crucial of Shakespearean ingredients, time, and this could yet be fully magical.